Ship of Rome. John Stack

       CHAPTER THREE

      The returning column from the legion encampment reached the dockside at Brolium an hour before sunset. With a curt command, Scipio dismissed the officers of the Aquila with orders to be ready to sail at dawn. He turned his horse in the direction of the villa and continued up the narrow winding streets of the port town, the way ahead deserted as before. Within minutes he was in the courtyard of the villa and Scipio dismounted before dismissing his guard.

      The senior consul made his way to his quarters, where he was met by his personal aid, the Nubian slave Khalil, whom Scipio had personally chosen from the slave markets of Rome; he was accompanied by two female slaves carrying fresh towels and warm, scented water. Before his appointment to the Senate, Scipio had been a fighting man by profession. His social position in the patrician class had afforded him the opportunity to join the legions as a tribune, but within ten years, by the time he reached twenty-eight, his aggression and ambition had taken him to the rank of legate, the overall commander of a Roman legion. He had used this position and his influential family connections to enter the Senate, where now, at only thirty-five years old, he held the position of senior consul, the highest elected official of the Republic.

      Although the battles he fought in the Senate against the other ambitious men of Rome were as fierce as any he had faced on the battlefield, they lacked the element of physical danger, of pitting one man’s strength against another’s. It was a sensation he relished, and he now lived it vicariously through the fighting men he trained for the arena. Khalil was one of his current stock, a tall, sinewy, powerfully built Nubian whose eyes, although clear and open, seemed to hide a defiant streak that came from having been taken in slavery and not being born to it. Scipio had bent this man to his will, knew he would now kill at his command, but he also knew that it was dangerous to keep such a man in his household, to turn his back on him, to allow him even to approach while he slept. It was this danger, this element lacking in the Senate, that Scipio found intoxicating. It had driven his career in the legions and it had drawn him now to the battlefields of Sicily, to be once more around the fighting men of Rome.

      Scipio allowed Khalil to help him undress and the female slaves washed his body before massaging warm oil into his upper torso. They dressed him in a clean white linen tunic and then stood back against the door, waiting for his next instruction.

      His habitual routine complete, Scipio began pacing the room, his mounting excitement at the voyage ahead light in his veins. The thoughts of once more facing mortal danger heightened his anticipation.

      ‘Make ready for my departure for Rome at dawn,’ Scipio ordered Khalil, who immediately turned to leave. The two female slaves made to follow him.

      ‘Wait,’ Scipio said, causing the three to stop. ‘You stay,’ he ordered, indicating the second of the two women. The others left, closing the door behind them. The woman stood waiting, the basin of cooling water heavy in her hands. She was Sicilian, tall and dark, with large brown eyes and long hair. Her coltish legs were accentuated by the short stola dress she wore, the cord around her waist emphasizing the flair of her hips. Scipio estimated that she was no more than twenty. With a nod of his head he indicated his cot in the corner of the room and she moved towards it, placing the basin on the ground as she went, the simple gesture heightening Scipio’s raw desire. Her expression never changed as she acquiesced, her face adopting the servile look of all slaves as she lay down on the bed.

      Scipio had called her to his room the night he’d arrived in Brolium, but this time was different. She could see the Roman could barely contain his sudden desire. Scipio never questioned why impending danger had this effect on him, he simply gave vent to his base desires. Tomorrow he would take sail back to Rome and he would need to show the calm exterior of a leader of Rome to all on board the galley. He would need to bury deep the excitement and lust for action threatening to manifest itself in his expression. Only now, in the privacy of his quarters, as he moved slowly towards the woman, could he give in to his emotions, the brief coupling a chance to assuage his exhilaration at the approach of danger.

      The sun had become a memory for the men on board the Aquila as they continued preparations for the dawn departure. The sky still held the light of the departed star, but it was rapidly losing ground to the approaching night, the head-lands at the edge of the harbour mouth becoming mere darkened shadows against the more reflective sea.

      Lucius approached Atticus on the foredeck.

      ‘We’ll be ready to sail by dawn, Captain. The last of the supplies are just arriving from the port barracks.’

      ‘Very good, Lucius. Have my cabin cleared and made ready for the senior consul.’

      ‘Yes, Captain,’ Lucius replied, and was immediately away.

      Atticus moved to the starboard rail. All around him the frantic activity of preparation continued. As always the sound most commonly splitting the air was the roar of Lucius’s voice, his words a whip crack to a careless or indolent crewman. To Atticus the sound was as much part of the ship as the creak of the deck timbers or the lapping of the tidal waters against the hull ten feet below him. His mind tuned out the sounds as his eyes wandered over the barges spread out across the harbour before him. In the near darkness he could vaguely distinguish their shapes, their hulls swinging slowly against the hold of their anchor lines as the current of the outgoing tide kept their hulls in parallel with each other and perpendicular to the dock. The same current pulled at the hull of the Aquila, drawing her away from the dock. She answered in kind, as if eager to sail, a creature born to the sea, pulling gently at the ropes that held her fast.

      The words of Septimus’s former centurion, Marcus, rang in Atticus’s ears: ‘Whatever needs to be done, you need to do it,’ he had said, and Atticus remembered how Septimus had consented without hesitation, revealing the unbreakable bond between former comrades and fellow Romans.

      A descendant of Magna Graecia and a sailor all his life, Atticus had never felt any attachment to the Roman citizens of the land-based legions. His duty had always been to his ship, his crew and the people of the Ionian coast under his protection, not to a Republic that was forged by men who were a breed apart from the people of his home city, Locri.

      Atticus’s ancestors had migrated from Greece over generations, slowly evolving and adapting the local culture to their own. In contrast, the legions of Rome swept over entire regions in a fraction of a lifetime, transplanting their culture and the ideals of their city as they went, absorbing entire populations into their Republic within a single generation.

      Atticus stood on the border of two worlds, his friendship with Septimus drawing him ever closer to Rome and the legions, while men like Scipio and Marcus blocked his path with distrust and age-old animosity. Beneath it all, Atticus could hear his ancestors whisper censure and lament for his association with Rome as they spoke of an ancient loyalty to his people who, for over five hundred years, had made southern Italy their own.

      The day dawned with the scent of must in the air, the scent of the dry arid land of northern Sicily. Atticus rose from his cot in one of the smaller aft cabins of the Aquila and looked out through the opened hatch to the harbour beyond. From his vantage point he could see that all of the transport barges were preparing for departure, taking